The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) last week filed public comments on the sector’s priorities for implementing the education components of H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) reconciliation legislation.
AACC’s comments were part of the opening stages of the formal negotiated-rulemaking process that the Education Department (ED) must go through when it promulgates new rules to the Higher Education Act’s student aid programs. Most of what the department is proposing to negotiate is a direct result of OBBB.
Two tables
ED has proposed two different negotiating committees. The first table – called the Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) Committee – will address changes to student loan policies in several respects, including original loan eligibility and repayment terms. (For the most part, federal loans will cost more; fortunately, only 12% of all community college students participate in the federal loan programs, according to an AACC analysis of federal data.)
Loan negotiators will also address the new authority given to institutions to reduce loan maximums on a programmatic basis, for all students in that program. AACC has advocated for this authority for several years, and now campuses will want to carefully consider how they might use it.
The second committee – the Accountability in Higher Education and Access through Demand-driven Workforce Pell (AHEAD) Committee – aims to implement Workforce Pell, the new accountability system that measures the earnings of program completers against a comparison group of high school graduates, and gainful employment/financial value transparency (GE/FVT) regulations. The latter regulations were not directly altered by the OBBB, but their requirements and structure closely relate to other parts of the law that require the generation of earnings data, among other things.
The RISE Committee will meet September 29-October 3 and November 3-7; the AHEAD Committee will gather December 8-12 and January 5-9.
AACC priorities
AACC’s comments provide the association’s perspectives on several issues to be fleshed during the negotiation process. In these negotiations, ED will initially provide draft regulations and AACC’s comments will hopefully inform them. AACC’s more prominent priorities include:
- Giving community college representatives their own seat on each negotiating table. ED is proposing to consolidate the representation of community colleges and four-year public institutions. AACC has written to ED about this highly irregular approach, seeking reconsideration given the different interests and perspectives of the sectors. Four-year public institutions are also concerned.
- Creating maximum efficiency and clarity in new reporting requirements and accountability measures. The new Workforce Pell, GE/FVT regulations currently in place, and the just-created earnings-based accountability scheme (on a programmatic basis, but for loans only), all use earnings and other related outcomes data. In an ideal world, these similar but somewhat different provisions will be closely aligned, if not uniform. In particular, Workforce Pell will require the collection, calculation and verification of completion and placement rates — programs must meet a 70 %/70% standard.
- Limiting GE sanctions to loan programs. Now that Congress is on record stating that programmatic earnings standards should impact loan eligibility only, AACC maintains that GE sanctions should apply to only loans as well. Currently, programs that do not meet GE standards lose all their Title IV eligibility.
AACC will remain highly engaged through both negotiated-rulemaking tables and will keep members informed as negotiators are selected and issue papers are released.
